The present invention relates to portable body protective devices and, more particularly, to a seat or back cushion usable to shield a user against injury from gunfire or an attacker having a sharp-edged or sharp-pointed weapon in a public (or private) gathering place, including a sensor and transmitter configured to send a signal to a remote server.
During medieval times, chain mail was worn to minimize injuries from flying arrows, and lances and during hand-to-hand combat. Garments of such chain mail were relatively effective, but very heavy and tended to limit the agility and movement by a user. Similarly, rigid contoured plates were worn for the same purposes and had the same drawbacks. For the most part, these personal protective devices are not effective to prevent injury from gunfire due to the speed and size of projectiles discharged from presently available firearms.
As technology developed, particularly in the field of man-made fibers, lighter weight materials are now available that offer significant resistance against penetration by projectiles discharged from currently available hand-held guns. Furthermore, these materials are essentially impenetrable to sharp-edged instruments, such as knives of various sorts, bayonets, icepicks, scissors, etc., any of which could otherwise inflict a painful, debilitating or fatal injury. Consequently, military and law enforcement personnel have used rigid, semi-rigid or flexible body armor made of some or all of these materials for years to protect themselves against injury from gunfire or a weapon wielding attacker. Materials of the type described above are sold by Dupont under the trademark Kevlar®, by Allied Signal under the trademark Spectra®, by Akzo Nobel under the trademark Twaron® and by Toyobo under the trademark Dyneema®. Collectively, these materials will be referred hereinafter as “threat-resistant materials”. Flexible metallic materials as well as various polymers would also be within this group of threat-resistant materials.
Since there has been a recent increase in school violence such as school shootings, stabbings, or violent incidents in public gathering place, there has been a desire for an affordable protection device to provide for every person in the public gathering place. More specifically, for the school environment, there is a need for every student at a school to have a personal protection device immediately available to them. Moreover, there is a clear deficiency in the current protocol related to responding to a school shooting situation by government authority.
An Associated Press® analysis found that since the 2013 Sandy Hook, N.J. killings, increased security measures at school across the country have not reduced the number of school shootings. There have been 74 shootings since the Newtown, Conn. incident. There have been 387 school shootings since 1992.
Further, a recent Federal Bureau of Investigation study revealed that the length of time from the first shot fired to the last shot fired is about six minutes. However, police response time is typically fifteen minutes or more. The delay in police response time is caused by current methods of notification. Since a gunshot is currently the main identification that an incident is occurring, this means that the incident is already well underway by the time the police are alerted and arrive. Once the first gunshot is fired, a person in a nearby but different location needs to recognize a problem is underway and telephone the proper authorities. Then, even when the authorities arrive at the scene, the location of the shooting is typically only based on hearing more shots being fired and attempting to pinpoint the location of the incident.
If students are not safe in the schools, then the quality of education in the classroom quickly becomes a moot point. When parents send their children to school every day, the school has a duty to anticipate foreseeable dangers and to take reasonable steps to protect their children from danger.
Conventionally, schools have utilized bullet-proof glass, resource officers, bullet-proof doors, and emergency procedures. However, all these conventional methods are limited in their applications.
For example, the above described conventional procedures have failed students, as revealed by recent studies. Recently, a fire alarm was activated causing students to leave the location of the current safety protocols. As the students were leaving the areas with bullet-proof glass and bullet-proof doors, the gunman was able to shoot them as they walked out of the building.